I must warn you: the following words will cumulate in a rather shining review of Melbourne band Flap!, so those looking for jaded Melbournian/Morrissey-style barbs and backlash, I ask you to seek your teeth-gnashing, fringe-flicking rock crit elsewhere.

I’ve been a Flap! fan for what seems like aeons now; they’re a band that never seem to have an “off” night, and are constantly in the finest spirits. The core of the band - award-winning trumpeter Eamon McNelis, ukulele enthusiast/singer Jess Guille, bass-man Mark Elton, and Ben Hendry on drums - have also accrued Shannon Barnett on trombone, making for a beautifully unique musical mish-mash.

Although they include a few new songs, Flap! play largely from their debut self-titled record. One of the new songs, "The Northcote Rooster Song" (“It’s about that giant chicken truck that goes up High Street about 3AM.”) is a sort of sea shanty that shows the band is in constant evolution.

Opening with "Poor Man", I realize Jess is playing a banjo/ukulele hybrid - A BANJO UKULELE, YOU GUYS. Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know you could do that. That’s my two favourite instruments together. Awesome.

The band’s Steve Miller cover, "Abracadabra", gets woots and ohhhs of recognition from newly converted Flap! fans. "Down, Down, Down", "My Funeral", and "Something More" set the crowd a-boogying in that devil-may-care, arms-waving, gloriously hedonistic fashion. The East Brunswick Club might as well be Sodom and Gomorrah tonight.

Guille sets a blue tone for the slower "Take Off My Dress" (“I’ve been searching for the time that you stole with my breath / Been undoing the bind I got in when I got undressed”), before the vaguely dark reggae mood of "Tomorrow Is A Fat Man" makes the whole room a bit dub-bouncy, and McNelis wails in that jazzy burr of his: “Tomorrow’s in the future / And the future’s great in bed.”

New song, "Rock in Space", is characteristic of Flap!’s swing-pop-jazz-gypsy-allsorts sound; a sunny, life-affirming ditty of fun and frivolity. “It’s really cool to be alive,” Guille explains.

“Here’s a song about having heaps of fun, because one day you’re all gonna die,” is the introduction to "Enjoy Yourself" and, by gum, don’t the crowd just take orders when they’re given. “The years go by as quickly as a wink / Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,” Guille sings in her sweet Aussie voice. “I like that she doesn’t pretend to be American,” someone near me says.

They close with the cajoling "Tetris" - the usual closer, for its speedy frazzle could not be followed - and, though the crowd crow for an encore, I doubt they’d have had the strength after the way some of those folks were dancing. They put me and my immoveable legs to shame.

With a new album out next year, I can only insist that you get into Flap! now, so that you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg when they play the Forum. Plus, you’ll be able to say, “I liked them before they were famous” ... Isn’t that what the kids like to say these days?